The Strategy Institute has been running high-end conferences targeting this space going all the way back to 2004, but I have not been all that interested in going to one for a while because of the way show sponsors can tend to drive the speaker line-up.

As I have noted a few times, not many people are all that interested in dropping more than $1K to hear shameless product pitches from vendors who paid for mike time and sometimes flat ignore even the subject listed on the agenda.

I’ve spoken at a few conferences and I make a pretty concerted effort to not do a pitch, which I think has always served me and my masters better in the end. People go to these things to learn.

So when I was skipping through some emails this morning I stopped and looked at an advancer on the latest incarnation of this event, in Las Vegas and leading into InfoComm, I was pleased to see that while there are indeed three or four opportunities to go out and make some calls as vendors hawk their pots and pans, there’s a pretty robust lineup of speakers and panels – very few of them the usual suspects (save for the omnipresent Lyle Bunn).

There’s a pretty good cross-section of people talking about technology efforts in areas such as government, health care, university and corporate communications.

I know I’ve not been the only one whining about recent conferences. Perhaps they’ve looked things over and realized they needed to tweak or disengage, as there is no shortage now of events talking about this stuff. I’m doing InfoComm, so maybe I’ll head to the convection oven that will be Vegas in June a day or two early.